Stephan Sweeney

I’m always amused when the left gets a little frustrated. Somewhere in the “dance” that takes place with the give and take they often let their mask slip and let the inner beast out.

Many times its just a result of not getting their way. For instance, New Jersey. Known for its hardball politics, when the Democratic President of the Senate didn’t get consulted by the governor concerning the budget after claiming to have worked with Governor Christie on the parts of the budget together (obviously expecting political payback for doing so) the Governor apparently held to principle and using the power vested in him by the NJ Constitution used the line item veto to further “prune” the state budget. Obviously his pruning took out some of the funding for programs that Sen. Sweeney felt he’d saved by cooperating previously. Since that wasn’t the case, Sweeney lost his cool, went personal and launched a full ad hominem attack.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney went to bed furious Thursday night after reviewing the governor’s line-item veto of the state budget.

He woke up Friday morning even angrier.

"This is all about him being a bully and a punk," he said in an interview Friday.

"I wanted to punch him in his head."

I’ve always been of the opinion that the punk is the one who ends up attacking like that, suggesting violence, etc. Now obviously you can argue that the politics of the past gave Sweeney the impression that cooperation would yield compromise. Give a little on his side, get a little for his side. But the belief that he’d get that was just that – a belief. Obviously Christie felt he’d been clear about what his goals were and how he planned on accomplishing them. Sweeney just as obviously thought he’d gotten around that by early cooperation.

We often hear it said of Barack Obama that he is doing exactly what he said he’d do and we shouldn’t be surprised. Apparently that argument is void in New Jersey. Senate President Sweeney expects the old way of doing things – you know the way that has them in deep financial trouble – to prevail over the new way, i.e. a principled approach to running government and paying off the debt. Obviously the guy who is doing what he said he’d do doesn’t agree with Sweeney.

What a punch in the head, huh?

The other example is sort of just the mask slipping all by itself. A self-inflicted wound so to speak -and many times it’s on Twitter *cough*Wienergate*cough*. For instance the Communications Director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party supposedly celebrating, one assumes, the “birthday” of Medicare.

Now there are a number of ways one could do that in 142 characters. And an abundance of them would be perfectly acceptable, show one’s support for the program (if one supports it) and relay why the person writing the Tweet supports said program. That’s if you’re not an idiot. And that’s exactly what Graeme Zielinski comes across as in his Tweet:

Nice to see Democrats in such fine form in the “civility” department. Perhaps now we can see a cessation of all the hypocritical and condescending lectures from them about the need for civility in politics, huh?